David Brady

David Brady holds the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Professor of Political Science in the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has published seven books and more than a hundred papers in journals and books. Among his most recent books are Leadership and Growth (World Bank Publications, 2010) with Michael Spence, Revolving Gridlock: Politics and Policy from Carter to Bush II (Westview Press, 2006), and Red and Blue Nation? Characteristics and Causes of America’s Polarized Politics with Pietro Nivola (Brookings Institution Press, 2007). His recent articles include “Why Is Health Care Reform So Difficult?” with Daniel Kessler, Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, April 2010; “Putting the Public’s Money Where Its Mouth Is” with Daniel Kessler, Health Affairs: The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere, August 2009, pages 917–25; “Leadership and Politics: A Perspective from the Growth Commission,” with Michael Spence, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 25, no. 2 (2009): 205–18; “The 2010 Elections: Why Did Political Science Forecasts Go Awry?” with Morris P. Fiorina and Arjun Wilkins, 2011.

Brady has been on continual appointment at Stanford University since 1986, where he has served as associate dean for Academic Affairs in the Graduate School of Business (GSB) and as vice provost for Distance Learning. He has twice been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987. He presently holds the Bowen H. and Janice Arthur McCoy Professorship in Ethics at the Business School and is deputy director of the Hoover Institution.

During his teaching career, he won the Dinkelspiel Award for service to undergraduates, the Richard Lyman Prize for service to alumni, the Bob Davies Award and the Jaedicke Silver Cup from the GSB, and the first Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award given at Stanford. He also won the George Brown Teaching Award at Rice University.

David Brady, Hoover deputy director and the Davies Family Senior Fellow, compares congressional elections from the 1880s to the present, emphasizing eras of uncertainty, party parity, and surges in independent voters.

David Brady, the deputy director and Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses the state of US governance in his talk entitled “Polarization, Broken Government, and the 2014 National Election.”

Governments’ inability to act decisively to address their economies’ growth, employment, and distributional challenges has emerged as a major source of concern almost everywhere. In the United States, in particular, political polarization, congressional gridlock, and irresponsible grandstanding have garnered much attention, with many worried about the economic consequences.

It is no secret that the global economy is struggling. Europe is in the midst of a crisis whose root cause is a structurally flawed monetary and economic union. The United States, emerging slowly from a financial crisis and widespread deleveraging, is experiencing a growth slowdown, a persistent employment problem, an adverse shift in income distribution, and structural challenges, with little effective or decisive policy action.

Earlier this week, David Brady, Professor of Political Science and the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, sat down with EconTalk host and Ho

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